Nintendo announced the 2DS a few days ago, but only for western territories such as North America and Europe. Did you notice that Japan was conspicuously absent from the recent news?
As it turns out, it sounds like Nintendo doesn’t intend to sell the 2DS in the country for the time being. J-CAST, after speaking with the company, reported the following (our translation is below):
Also in Japan, “What is Nintendo doing?” is what some critics are saying, still there are Nintendo fans who want [a 2DS] just because it’s a new model. So will this even launch in Japan? When we talked with Nintendo’s public relations: this new project is being executed in America and Europe where the populations are so large, so it’s only being executed in limited countries for now. There are no plans to sell the 2DS in Japan at this time.
This is somewhat of a unique situation for Japan. Other than the Wii Mini, I can’t think of any new hardware Nintendo has introduced over the past few years that hasn’t arrived in the territory.
